To the Rhythm of Shopping On Rhythmic and Territorial Stabilisations of Public Space in Urban Retail Environments

(OBS! Work in progress) Mattias Krrholm PhD, Research Fellow Department of Architecture & Built Environment, LTH, LU mattias.karrholm@arkitektur.lth.se

Summary:
This article deals with the impact of certain retail strategies on urban life. More specifically it deals with two recent tendencies of the retail environment: (a) spatial homogenisation and clustering of retail into large areas or territories, and (b) the synchronisations of retail with different kinds of public activities and events. For the last decades, retail areas have tended to grow larger and more legible, whereas a lot of stores in residential areas have been forced to close. The stores of the city centre tend to concentrate to certain streets or pedestrian precincts. However, in addition to this we have the seemingly contradictive tendency of retail deterritorialization and spreading, in order to make use of public places, such as railways stations, bus stations, museums, libraries, etc. In this article, I use Malm as an example. Malm has been quite successful (in a Swedish context) during the last decade, with an increasing number of customers and stores. Here, we do not just have the territorialization and consolidation of (for example) the centre as a shopping district, but also retailers that try to organize and in different ways synchronize commercial rhythms with important urban rhythms and mobilities of everyday life. These two trends of territorialization and synchronisation both feed and counteract each other in different ways. The article makes use of Lefebvres rhythmanalysis as well as a territorial analysis (Krrholm, 2004, 2005) in an effort of first identifying and defining these current trends of the retail environment (in Malm). I then go on to focus mainly on the neglected but influential aspect of synchronization in order to discuss some of the ways in which affect territorial production and public life, i.e. supporting certain urban rhythms, uses and identities while undermining others.

1. Introduction
As the old city scheme of centre and periphery gradually changes to multicentred regional urban landscapes, retail development seems to have more

to do with assemblage, density and territorialization, than with position vis-vis the old city cores. The centrality of a place is not automatically defined by its position to the old town, but rather by its relation to places of strong identity and attractivity. This change has promoted a new kind of competition, where even the old city centres follow the logic of territorialization, concentrating their stores within the frame of an identifiable area, such as the pedestrian precincts, BIDs, or other kinds of micropolises (Graham & Marvin 2001, Nielsen, Albertsen & Hemmersam, 2004). As commercial activities and retail areas have become a larger and more influential part of urban space during the last decades (Miles & Miles 2004), public life seems, more and more, to take place within such places as shops, pedestrian precincts and shopping malls. Even activities that used to be more independent, such as airports, railway stations, libraries and museums, do now include spaces for shopping, or even malls. It seems as if almost all larger public spaces, at least to some degree, are being reserved for commercial activities and shopping, it has been argued, has become the last remaining form of public activity (Tae-Wook Cha et. al. 2001:125). What then does this imply for urban everyday life? New commercial spaces, more spare time, new communication technology, outdoor restaurants, city festivals, etc., have contributed to a kind of renaissance of public life in the city centres (Gehl & Gemze 1996). At the same time, public life tends to be reduced to consumption within malls and enclaves; whereas social problems in public space are increasingly handled through strategies of displacement (leading up to what has been described as the revanchist city, Smith 1996, Atkinson 2003). Commercial activities could thus be connected to a renaissance of public life, as well as to trends of privatisation and social homogenisation. The focus of recent research on retail environment have often dealt with such aspects of territorialization, and the tendency of shopping areas and malls to withdraw from the wider urban fabric (Graham & Marvin 2001:268), or to create non-places (Auge 1995), enclaves, malls without walls (Graham & Marvin 2001) camp-like facilities (Diken 2004), branded streets (Wrigley & Lowe 2002) or huge out-of-context complexes (Koolhaas 1995). In this article, I want to add a discussion of a somewhat more neglected aspect of the retail environment, which, although clearly related to territorialization, sometimes can be seen as an opposite tendency, feeding on variety rather than homogenisation the commercialization of urban rhythms. The commercial consolidation of public space is not just about spatial control, but also of a temporal control contributing to the synchronisations of city life. Synchronisation is a strategy of assembling and framing flows and rhythms in time (and space), of bringing together people and activities in a space (one way of investigating synchronisations is of course Hgerstrand's time-geography, c.f. Crang 2001, see also Carlstein 1980, on difference between synchronization and synchorization). Synchronization and territorialization are related and the synchronisation of steady rhythmic flows of people often attracts activities and shops (e.g. bringing about the territorialization of a shopping area). There are however also rhythmic and (at least at a local scale) non-territorial ways of establishing retail in the urban landscape. Mobile retail and vendors

dominated private consumption until the 1830s in Sweden (Bergman 2003). These types of retail minimizes investments and rents by utilizing public space, and their mobility also allow them to change in accordance with urban rhythms. During the second part of the 19th and almost the whole of the 20th century, this type of retail was effectively restricted and legislated against. Today, we might, however, again see a growth of vendors and mobile retail (Cross 2000), in Malm e.g. selling ice-cream, hot meals, groceries, or magazines (as Aluma, a magazine sold by homeless people in Malm). If territorialization indicates an increase of spatial socialisation or control, synchronization implies a variety of different activities utilized (or exploited) by way of coordination. Commercial activities are, in short, dependent both on agglomeration and homogenization on the one side (territorialization), and on variation and heterogeneity on the other (synchronization). Henri Lefebvre, probably the most well known writer on urban rhythms, describes rhythmanalysis as possible method of investigating everyday life (Lefebvre 2004). The concept of everyday, does in fact already imply a rhythm the focus on activities that occur every day and the study of urban rhythms have also received some attention from geographers (Allen 1996, Crang 2001, Thrift & Amin 2002). The urban landscape is a place of heterogeneous temporalities and rhythms set by clock time, working hours, seasons, timetables, bodily functions, etc., leaving places to be hectic and dense at one time and deserted at another. Shops do indeed contribute to these rhythms in very concrete and important ways, as they effect, or are effected by, opening hours, weather, seasons, weekends, holidays, paydays, and daily cycles. Spatial commercialisation could in fact be described as the adding of certain rhythms to a public place, and the retail environment always need some synchronizing strategies in order to be profitable. Contemporary retail planning has also become more skilled in the art of capitalizing city rhythms. Investors and entrepreneurs have come to realise the economical potential of relatively unexploited evenings, nights (Bianchini 1995, Schlr 1995), as well as the winter months (Gehl & Gemze 1996), different cultural seasons are turned into commercial festivals, etc. (Olsson 1998, Gannetz 2000). The commercial rhythms are perhaps most obvious at the shopping mall; the artificial black box of the mall could in a way even be described as a kind of rhythm machine. By keeping out climate, seasonal changing, and daylight one produces a kind of tabula rasa where commercial rhythms can rein free (Dovey 1999, Ganetz 2001).

2. Malm and the Commercialization of Rhythms

Malm has, in a Swedish context, been quite successful commercially during the last decades, with an increasing number of customers and stores. The pedestrianized areas of the old city core have grown and sales are increasing with the introduction of new malls and shopping galleries. Large scale car oriented shopping areas have also been further developed (e.g. Svgertorp). This has also brought about a commercialization of public life,

where new mono-functional territories (of shops) are developed and where the old city core now could be described as beeing divided in two (following a figure-background logic) one largely pedestrianized mono-functional shopping area, and then the rest (offices, dwellings, institutions and other functions, but characterized by the fact that the number of shops are slowly decreasing). Malm had, in total, about 1800 stores in 2001, a slowly decreasing number but with a steady increase in sales and size. The central shopping district have increased sales in terms of choice product retailing, whereas everyday merchandize increases in car oriented places. (Detaljhandeln i Malm 2001, 2004, Tufvesson 1992). Based on other studies of the retail environments of Malm (to some extent presented elsewhere, Krrholm 2006a, 2006b) I will here present (or sketch) five different types of synchronization, that is ways in which commercial activities synchronize urban rhythms. 2.1. To the rhythm of shopping (organising) First of all, commercial actors tend to organize in order to synchronise important events, opening hours, advertisement, and commercial drives. The intention is to ensure a kind of critical mass of shoppers, stabilised by joint ventures and organization. These synchronizations are most evident in the city core, where e.g. Malm Citysamverkan was founded in 1995 in order to increase sales, co-operation between shopkeepers, as well as the attractivity of the city. Their strategies include giving courses at the City Academy, working for longer and synchronized opening hours, less vandalism, safety, and arranging events on Saturdays and holidays (www.malmocity.nu). The founding of collaborations such as Citysamverkan became a trend during the 1990s both at local and national level. The national equivalent, Svenska Stadskrnor was founded in 1993, with both private entrepreneurs and municipalities as interested parties. The Swedish Urban Environment Council (Stadsmiljrdet) was founded already in 1988 by the goverment, setting up guidelines for urban devopment. Together these organizations played a part in the extensive and to some extent rather uniform redevelopment and redesign of some 70 Swedish city cores during the 1990s (Bergman 2003: 178 f.). In Malm, apart from Citysamverkan, there are also smaller, local collaborations, like sterGruppen, caring for the east part of the city core Our goal is to create a more attractive ster city, our Shopping mall (www.ostercity.se) - and Lilla torg. Lilla torg is a company owned by the restaurants owners around the square of Lilla Torg, investing money in gas heaters, new pavement and arranging events. In short, urban life has come to be more of a recreational public event culture where different kinds of (often commercial) organisation produce scheduled events. The example par excellence, is perhaps the large City festivals that became popular in Sweden during end of the 1980s (on the festivalization of the city, Olsson 1998, Bergman 2003:178) The festival marketplace is a type, developed in the tradition of older markets, carnivals etc. but that has become institutionalised and commercialized during the 1990s. (Ellin 1997:183).

Malm has one of Swedens first (1985- ) and most popular City festivals (75% of the city inhabitants are said to visit the festival), and shopping has become a more and more important part of the festival during the last years (www.malmofestivalen.se). All the scheduled events of festivals, organizations, collaborations, shopowners etc., represent ways of creating new rhythms and flows of people over the year, redistributing and attracting people in an effort of increasing sales as well as the predictability of customer behaviour. 2.2. To the rhythms of flows and movements (localizing) A second type of synchronisation is that of shopping adjusting to important urban flows and movements. Shops have of course always tended to locate themselves at places where a lot of people pass by, e.g. at the most spatially integrated city streets (c.f. Hillier 1996, on cities as movement economies). With the increasing importance of the car (Sheller & Urry 2000), this localization patterns have become more complex as flows of different character emerge; some shops are localized to large roads and highways, whereas other shops tend to localize at pedestrian and cycle flows. The Swedish retail environment has, during the last decades changed so that a lot of retail has moved from local areas and neighbourhoods to car-oriented places in the outskirts or (sometimes) to pedestrianized areas of the old city cores. The average distance from home to store has thus increased, whereas stores become bigger (Franzn 2001). These changes are, however, not just a question of relocation but a shift where distance seems to become less important and spatial integration (topology) more. Shops, from grocery stores to gas stations have decreased dramatically in number during the last decades, but the ones that do prosper are usually big and well-connected to important trajectories and arteries of the urban landscape. The sociologist Anne Cronin have described how commercial advertisers utilize urban rhythms e.g. of people commuting to work. Large billboards are placed at important places, along pedestrian streets, highway exits, bus stops, train stations, etc. (Cronin 2004). In Malm, most of the large commercial investments do not just adjust to interurban flows but are planned to feed upon regional movements. The increasing number of shops at train stations, bus stations and airports are of course a point in the case, but there are more important ones. Svgertorp and Hyllievng, the two largest shopping areas in progress (the first with c:a 30 hectare of category killers, the second with plans for a mall of 70.000 square meters) are planned in connection to the first Swedish highway exit, and the first Swedish train stop, from Copenhagen, Denmark. Another example is the project Stadens entre (The Gate of the City), a gigantic entertainment centre planned for of 25.000 square meter of shops and 11.000 square meters of entertainments (cinemas, restaurants etc.), located at the east entrance of Malm city core (one of the most important entrances to the city) just next to the bus square of Vrnhemstorget.

2.3. To the rhythm of seasons and moments (timetabling) A third type of synchronisation is that of shopping adjusting to the rhythms of cosmological and cultural seasons, and to institutionalized moments of different kinds. The adjustment of retail to urban rhythms is not just spatial but also temporal, and both have a long history. An important modern example of temporal adjustment is that of the prolongation of opening hours at evenings and weekend, the proliferation of after-hours supermarkets etc., efforts that have been going on since the 1960s in order to adjust opening hours to peoples spare time (Bergman 2003, Gehl & Gemze 1996). Still today, the shop owners of Malm are discussing opening hours, suggesting a shift to later hours in order to better coincide with after-work time. At some parts of Malm (Lilla torg, stergatan) we also see how night clubs and night time entertainment blend with shops, keeping the city populated both day and night. Related to this is also the prolongation of seasonal activities, where out door restaurant try to exploit larger and larger parts of the year. At the beginning of 2000 there was a clear raise in the number of open air cafs that searched (and got) permit for their license also during wintertime. There are also synchronisations that adjust (and indeed rewrite) cultural seasons and holidays. Hillevi Ganetz have described how shopping malls try to profit on cultural seasons by reconstructing them as commercial seasons: School start, Halloween, Fathers day, Christmas, Valentines day, Winter sports holiday, Mothers day, and Summer (Ganetz 2004) all become transformed by the association to, and production of, specific advertisements, drives, events, sales, etc. Ganetz also notes that the commercial seasons of summer, autumn, Christmas, etc. does not totally coincide with their cultural or cosmological equivalents. At the mall autumn begins already in summer with the start of the schools, Christmas starts just after Halloween but ends already before New years eve (and not as traditionally in Sweden at Tjugondag Knut) in short, retail uses the seasons in order to create new rhythms shaped after the logic of commerce (c.f. Cronin). In the end, this does affect both the role, scope, and even dates of cultural holidays and seasons. Malm does of course also have its share of Christmas fairs, Farmers markets, Luciatg, skating rinks, sports events, festivals, etc. The effect of these has in fact become massive, mostly due to the improved organization of commercial actors and shop keepers, as described above. Commercial seasons, such as Christmas are today large spectacles not just limited to malls, shops and shop windows, but imbuing the urban landscape as a whole. The synchronization of moments does of course participate in the territorialization of public places (even though they are restricted to a certain time); they do however also produce a kind of metaphorical territories, where the object of control and ownership is not a certain area but a certain date or moment of time (see Krrholm 2004:46f. on metaphorical territoriality).

2.4. To the rhythm of various activities (hybridising) A fourth type of synchronization that has been given some attention during the last years is the synchronization of shopping to the rhythms of other activities such as museums, libraries, airports, cruise ships etc. (Wrighley & Lowe 1996, Leong, 2001, Miles & Miles 2004). This phenomena is sometimes describes as captured markets (although I think hosted markets would perhaps be a better expression). The airport is a well-known and paradigmatic example of how shopping have adjusted to the rhythm of airplane travelling and vice versa (hybridizing the functions of both shopping and airplane travelling). Airport passengers do only have a very limited amount of time (although as shops sales surpasses ticket sales this times is often prolonged e.g. by demands on having to check in a certain time before departure, Leong 2001), so the strategy is to make as much profit as possible within a very short amount of time. This implies a focus on famous brands (quick and easy to recognize), recognizable shop types, expensive commodities, large entrances, no shop windows (or windowshopping), a lot of exposed products, and that commodities that traditionally are sold from behind a counter are possible to take for yourself. The queues are minimized and shops are made intelligible so that you are able to see the exit as you enter (Freathy & OConnell 1998). In Malm a lot of captured markets have cropped up during the last years. The number of shops at the airport (Sturup) and the railway station has increased, the City Art gallery, Library, and Museums have all developed and expanded their shops. One can also see more and more total environments, both in large and small scales that blend restaurants and cafs with entertainments, playgrounds for children, and shopping of different kinds (Big Bowl, Laser Dome, Entertainment Centres, Ikea, etc.). Shopping has been internalized in a long row of formerly more autonomous activites and enterprises. Sometimes public service invites shopping (such as at the library or at the museum), sometimes public service find its way out to the malls, such as when the Swedish taxation authorities put up offices at shopping malls in order to help people with their income tax return. 2.5. To the rhythms of the body (pleasing) A fifth (and in this article, the final) type of synchronization is the synchronization of shopping with various bodily rhythms. Retail try to make use and feed upon different body rhythms such as pace, hunger, fatigue, thirst, etc. One of the earliest 20th century strategies of adjusting to body rhythms was the escalator and the muzak, both parts in the efforts of keeping shoppers on the move, setting the pace (Leong 2000). The synchronization of shopping to certain body rhythms have today also led to the development of phenomena such as eatertainment and entertainment retail. In order to keep shoppers within the mall, pedestrian precinct, store, etc. one tries to combine shopping with good seating facilities, food, drinks and entertainment. When a bodily rhythm such as hunger sets in, the

shopping of commodities can change to the shopping of food, and the synchronisation of rhythms thus enables a body, exhausted from a certain rhythm, to rest for a moment by tuning into another. The body has by Lefebvre been described a bundle of rhythms (Lefebvre 2004:80) where each part of the body has its own rhythm. The body thus produces a polyrhythmia, but also a eurhythmia, which is a plenitude of different but associated rhythms (Lefebvre 2004). At a deeper level, this synchronization of shopping with the rhythms of the body links our embodied biographical movements in the city with the biographies of commodities (Cronin 2004:12). The lifecycle of commodities, jingles, etc. follow us and we might associate them with a certain time in our life, etc. Through the nursing and caring for our bodily rhythms, the retail environment has also come to play a new and, in a way, more important role in our lives. Bodily rhythms are indeed vital, but often unreflected and tacit. This fifth type of synchronization might therefore seem to act in subtle ways, but it could very well have a much larger impact than realized at first. In Malm, this growing awareness of bodily rhythms is quite explicit in a lot of new commercial investments, such as the cropping up of restaurants and cafs and even open air food courts (Lilla torg) in the central shopping district, the entertainment centre Stadens entr, a massive increase of out door seating facilities at the pedestrian streets, a.s.o. The intention of utilizing bodily rhythms is often to get people to spend more of their time in the retail environment.

3. Synchronisation and territorialization

The five types of synchronisation are just analytical ways of presenting different aspects of the phenomena of rhythm synchronisations. These types are always entangled and act together in order to maximize effects. They are dominating rhythms aiming for an effect that is beyond themselves (Lefebvre 2004:18). They are of course not exceptional for our time, but have been present for as long as there have been retail. The point is, however, that today (in Malm, as in a lot of other places), one can observe these synchronisations at a scale and pace that seem so manifest and stable that it calls for further investigation. Perhaps one could even talk about a paradigmatic shift. Today, one need not go to a shopping mall in order to observe how commercial actors organize and synchronize different rhythms, but these are easily recognized all over the urban landscape. How then do these synchronizations affect public space and life? I will try to deal with this question by relating synchronisation to territorialization, since synchronisations also form part of different territorial productions; retail territorialize public space by way of rhythms and strategies of time. Mobility has often been regarded as a means of deterritorialization, for example Tim Cresswell notes in InPlace/Out of Place that:
[Mobility] appears to be a kind of superdeviance. It is not just out of place, but disturbs the whole notion that the world can be segmented into clearly defined places.(Cresswell 1986:87)

Following my discussion so far, I would rather argue that mobility or movement can be a part of both de- and reterritorialization. Territorial movements and rhythms could be one of the activities defining the territory, for example in terms of circulation within the territory (as in a shopping mall) or as an oscillating movement from the centre to the periphery and back again as in the idea of the neighbourhood unit. Thus, I do not think that the postmodern notion of nomads (Cresswell 1997, Deleuze & Guattari 1987) or mobile actors as subscribers of freedom and resistance (tactics as betting on time, and strategies on place, to follow Certeau 1984:39), should be taken as an absolute or neccesary association. Deleuze & Guattari have in fact developed a view on territories as someting not static or pre-given, but always on-going and becoming, and they have done this through the use of musical metaphors (taking their cue from animal territoriality, as birds sing to mark their territory). Each territory is shaped by a certain rhythm or refrain, constituting the base for different melodies, signals or loops (Deleuze & Guattari 1988). The analogy between human and animal territoriality is then not be found in some generic instincts or biological roots (as was commonly understood, but also much debated within research on territoriality during the 1970s and 80s, Krrholm 2004), but in a rhythmic activity of humming, patrolling, marking, etc. as Brown and Capdevila has described:
Here is why the word territory is so apposite: because the order and security it provides are not static phenomena, but mobile. Much like the space marked out by a territorial animal, territory constantly shifts as it is continually remarked and re-presented in different ways. And much as these territorial creatures can only extend their territories at great cost, so we might also note the sheer difficulty of sustaining this process of remarking. (Brown & Capdevila 1999:41 f).

Rhythm seems to be the main form through which mobilities takes part in territorial production. But what about synchronizations? Not only do synchronizations play an important part in different kinds of territorializations, its main feature is often to conduct the relationships between different and overlapping territories, to create orders and hierarchies of territorial complexes consisting of different territorial productions.

4. Towards Isorhythmic Public space

In this final part, I will turn towards the question of public and private space. Since commercial spaces are characterised by both publicisations and privatisations, I have chosen to avoid the polarization of public/private and instead discuss these issues in terms of how different territorializations intermingle or counteract at the different places, bringing about complex patterns and rules of accessibility, both in relation to persons and usages (Krrholm 2005). Public spaces are often the place of several intermingling territorial productions. A square could, during the same week, or even day, be the place of markets, demonstrations, parking lots, skaters, gangs of youth, children playing etc. all producing some sorts of more or less stable

territories. A possible description of public space (as a space of sociability and accessibility) could then be to see it in terms of territorial complexities (see Krrholm 2005, for longer discussion and empirical cases). In places of territorial complexity, the access of space has to be subdivided (in time or space) in order to accommodate for different uses, and in order to make room for as many different categories of users as possible. A certain degree of territorial sorting and overlapping could very well bring about a much higher degree of accessibility (Hajer & Reijndorp 2001:120f.), as spatial rules and conventions in different ways enable us to act (and co-act). One can, at this point, recall the learning from Foucault: power and discipline have a productive side to it (Foucault 1974). Several territorial orders also indicate several possibilities, and the danger of an excluding one-sided spatial use does not just lie in territorial homogenisation (of one territorial production becoming more stable), but in a one-layered territorial order and a place lacking superimposed territorial productions. Public space could then be described as the product, or perhaps better, work (oeuvre, to follow Lefebvre 1991) of the territorial productions of a certain place, and although such a description does not cover the full scope of the concept public, it nevertheless provides us with a useful metaphor. This way of description bears resemblances with public space as seen through the eyes of e.g. Goffman, Jacobs, Lofland and Sennett, (Weintraub 1998, Madanipour 2003), but also enables a more precise discussion on the relation between different kinds of territorial productions (and thus on aspects of access and exclusion within a certain public place). The territorial complexity of public places could be described a bit more in detail using some remarks on complexity from Mol and Law (Mol & Law 2002). First of all, territorial complexity is about the number of territories. How many territorial orders can be found all together? At the shopping mall there is often one territorial production dominating the place. As these places become scenes of new territorial production, complexity increases:
The trope of the single order that reduces complexity (or that is bound to fail in its attempt to do so) starts to lose power when order is multiplied, when order turns in to orders. (Mol & Law 2002: 7).

Secondly, territorial complexity is about multi-layered territorial production, meaning that a number of territorial productions take the place at a certain spatial extension (c.f. Mol & Law 2002:11ff). The square, the street, the yard (or whatever place you are investigating) does then consist of several territorial productions, not just side by side, but actually sharing the same space. Thirdly, territorial complexity is about how different territorial productions relate to each other. Are there tendencies of spatial homogenisation or synchronisation resulting in the domination of a single territorial production? Within territorial complexity one could expect that different territorial productions are not reduced to units within a larger scheme, as parking spaces in a parking lot, or shops in a mall (c.f. Mol & Lwa 2002:13ff). There is then a complexity also in the vertical structure of the territorial control (Delaney 2005:31 ff., on verticality), in short, there is no privileged position at where the whole complex of territorial productions can be viewed or to some extent controlled (as an obligatory point of passage).The regulation of a places do instead involve several different, co-

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operating or competiting territorial strategies and the following of different rhythms. The current urban trend of entertainment and recreation does indeed add to the number of territories at public places, but the addition of territorial productions does not necessarily bring about a greater degree of complexity, since the addition of territorial production is synchronised so that the territorial production only follows one or a few rhythms, mainly controlled from the perspective of commercial interests. Commercial actors utilize existing rhythms, enhance them and rewrite them, and consequently tend to turn polyrhythmic landscapes into isorhythmic ones. If polyrhythmia indicates diverse rhythms, isorhytmia is when temporalities coincide and become orchestrated as by a conductors baton (Lefebvre 2004:67). As the number of territorial productions become scheduled possibilities of the unexpected might decrease or perhaps put more correctly: in order to overcome a monolithic isorythmia one might need to mobilize larger and larger collectives of actors in order to make a lasting difference (Latour 2005, although this is not necessarily always the case, Law 2002). When writers and planners argue for a urban renaissance and a new public life, they tend to forget the isorythmic tendency that seem to have grown larger over last couple of decades in a number European cities (Malm included). This trend is not limited to certain places of the city; due to its extraterritorial character it affects the urban landscape as a whole (suggesting rhythms, schedules, movements, moments, etc. that to some extent actually apply to the whole of the urban landscape). Events such as Malmfastivalen, shopping areas like the City or Svgertorp, commercial seasons such as Christmas do indeed affect the whole region. New rhythms and cycles were introduced with the introduction of the industrial society (Young 1989) the linear and dominating rhythms of production (Lefebvre 1991). However, the rhythms of consumption are now becoming increasingly important and differs somewhat from these as they are considerably more adjustable and flexible (although, to be fair, it seems as if the rhythms of production also has changed in this direction, c.f. Sennett 1998). The rhythms of consumption are sensitive to existing cosmical, cultural and corporeal rhythms, and are always manipulative in trying to find ways of utilizing these. Today, it seems as if the rhythms of consumptions are always there, so that whatever you do, you can always do it to rhythm of shopping. The commercialization of the rhythms of seasons, movements, bodies and activities do perhaps create a great sense of comfort wherever you are you can always get a cup of coffee or a coke but this ubiquity is also a distraction that to some extent might slow down the evolvement of diversity, new experiences and cultures (Young 1989: 180 ff.). Perhaps we should not be too categorical or pessimistic about this, since rhythms are differences with repetition (Lefebvre 2004:90) and thus always carries a seed for change. The possibilities of change are also an important factor immanent in the strategies of commercial enterprise, as they feed upon trends and new rhythms in society. Commercial actors are thus not only dependent on the knowledge of the polyrhythmia of urban life in order to utilize it, but on the polyrhythmic activities themselves, since

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total predictability, stabilisation and stagnation equals death to commercial profit and the production of new desires.

5. Conclusions
In this article I have introduced territorialization and synchronization as two important trends and aspects of the contemporary retail environment. Primarily discussing the retail development of Malm, I have then discussed the often neglected aspect of synchronization, suggesting five different types of rhythms that seem to have been increasingly commercialized during the last decades: the rhythms of shopping, movements, moments, activities and bodies. I then went on to point to synchronization as a way of territorializing public space, and also to how synchronization, although adding activities and possibilities to a public space still might participate in its impoverishment (and in a decrease of territorial complexity), by the conducting of an isorythmic urban landscape. The trend of isorhythmia is perhaps all the more important to acknowledge, since its effects are not limited to certain places of the city, but do to some extent influence the whole of the urban landscape. Strategies of synchronization might perhaps look heterogeneous and deterritorializing from the perspective of a specifc territory (the shopping district), as it introduces new activities or colonizes new places or times. Such a view could, however, be decieving, since these additions come with an isorhythmia that not only affects the territory or place at hand, but also contributes to large-scale transformations, turning the urban landscape into a region of shopping culture.

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